CLAWSON – The smell of chlorine still fills the halls outside of the pool entrance located between the Clawson Middle and High schools.

However, there was one major void in the water as the 2012-13 Michigan High School Athletic Association boys’ swimming and diving season got underway on Saturday with the first possible date of competition.

Clawson High will no longer be among the more than 200 swimming programs in the state offering the sport to its student-athletes for the winter season.

“I’m very disappointed because they have great talent in Clawson High School and Middle School,” said Joe Turner III, who was slated to begin his eighth season as the Trojans’ head coach. “It’s been a wonderful program to coach.”

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Since the mid-1990s, the school decided to help boost numbers by making a co-ed squad that allowed girls to compete with the boys during the winter sports season. However, the program has struggled in recent seasons to even field a double-digit number of competitors despite having a school enrollment of about 600.

The team has hit a new low in 2012.

Turner said only three returning swimmers and two rookies walked out on the pool deck when the state allowed practices to begin on Nov. 19th. Practices continued, but the roster numbers never grew.

“Fiscally, we can’t run a team of four (or five) kids,” Clawson athletic director Adam Schihl said. “To not be competitive and to have to pay the price for travel and to have to pay the price for a coach does not add up.”

The athletic department made the decision to cancel the varsity season earlier in the week. Freshman boys’ basketball has also been dropped as a result of low participation.

While hopes of competing this winter is dashed for the few high schoolers who did want to participate, the future is not entirely bleak.

Schihl said he has held talks as recent as this week with another Macomb Area Conference Silver athletic director about the possibility of organizing a cooperative team for girls’ swimming in the fall of 2013.

The decision to push for a girls’ squad is because more female swimmers have come out for the team in recent years, Schihl said.

That fellow MAC AD plans to present the proposal at the school’s upcoming board meeting. Clawson could know by the end of the year if reviving a program for the girls is an option.

“As an AD, the last thing I wanted to do is take a sport away from student-athletes,” Schihl said. “It’s unfortunate for the few that wanted do it. I feel their pain and understand as a former college athlete who was wrestling and had my sport taken way in the middle of my career. It’s not fun.”

Should the idea of a cooperative girls’ squad pass and be successful, there’s a chance a cooperative agreement could be made for the boys in the future.

“It would be better than having nothing,” Turner said of the co-op proposal. “I just wish neither team could be lost. I wish we could find a way for the boys and the girls to both be very strong.”

Turner had hoped the co-ed team would be able to remain in place in 2012-13 with the expected return of some top swimmers, but that turned out not to be the case.

Two top female swimmers opted to join the competitive cheer team instead.

Three boys, including a sophomore who finished in the top six in last season’s division meet, all bowed out for various reasons as well.

The trio of boys was headed for the Clawson school record board, but not now.

In addition, there was the expectation of incoming freshmen continuing on after having success in the middle school program. However, some of those students ended up choosing to attend different high schools.

Turner, Schihl and some students have said the lack of interest has ranged from not wanting to deal with challenging early morning practices to dislike of the coach and from wanting to participate in other activities with friends to girls being uncomfortable racing against boys.

There’s even the misconception that the boys have to wear old-style short Speedo suits to compete.

Whatever the reason people gave to pass up participating, it makes sophomore Vivian Eckert upset that she’s forced to get out of the pool.

“I’m sad, disappointed, very disappointed, and kind of angry,” said Eckert, who has been swimming competitively since seventh grade. “(I’m angry) because some of the people who swam last year decided not to swim because they think that since they didn’t win all of their events they’re not good enough and they feel they don’t have to swim anymore.

“People think Coach Joe is a bad coach, but he is definitely not. He works with you to get better. He helps you with everything. Like, even if you have problems at home, he helps you. Even when the pool was shut down last year, he took us to another pool to have us swim because he cares so much about us.”

In the meantime, swimming in the Clawson pool will continue for the 20-30 middle schoolers and for the Neptune Aquatic Club – an age-group competitive USA Swimming program run by Turner.

Sophomore Gabriel Thompson was looking forward to shaving about 14 seconds off his best time last season in the 500-yard freestyle in order to make the state qualifying standards this year. Instead, he will now have to focus on competing with Neptune.

“It feels disappointing,” Thompson said of losing his high school team. “I really don’t like it, but there’s just a general lack of interest in swimming, so there’s nothing I can really do about it, which is something I hate.”

According to information provided by the MHSAA, there was an overall participation decline of 4.7 percent for boys’ swimming in 2011-12.

“Swimming is a huge commitment in the way they train, but then again sometimes you think the lifetime sports might be the most attractive to kids. This is not necessarily case so much anymore.”

Despite not having a high school swim season, Eckert is not giving up.

She has volunteered to assist with the middle school program this winter. She’s doing her best to keep interest levels up so her younger brother T.J. will have a team to race on when he enters high school next year.

The idea is to keep the middle schoolers trained and interested in the sport so they will want to continue once they’re in high school.

“Things come and go,” Schihl said. “In the years past Clawson did not have wrestling a program … and we were able to slowly build it back up. Now, we have a pretty good wrestling program that has about 24 kids. It takes time to build a program once it’s cut.”

Turner said he understands why the school made the move – especially at times when schools are looking to make cost-cutting moves. However, he is determined to look ahead to the future of swimming at Clawson.

“I’m still going to be there and promote swimming and try to get the program back on its feet for next year,” said Turner, who is also an assistant coach for the Bloomfield Hills Andover girls’ team. “I really want the kids to have a swim season. It’s not just about me. It’s about the kids and making sure the kids have fun and have a competitive program that succeeds. That’s something I look forward to every day.”

Rick Dylewski became Clawson’s third-ever boys’ coach in 1980. He held the post for 17 seasons. When the numbers struggled with the girls, the program switched to a co-ed squad in the mid-1990s.

He’s stayed involved with the sport by officiating meets at both Clawson and Madison Heights Lamphere.

To know where the program once was to where it is now, saddens Dylewski.

“We had some exceptional kids go through there,” said Dylewski, a 1979 Clawson graduate “It’s a very sad state of affairs because if history proves anything, once a program goes away it’s very difficult - if not impossible - for it to come back.”

Long-time Royal Oak High School boys’ swim coach Darrin Millar was caught by surprise when he heard the news.

“It’s sad,” said Millar, who is entering the 26th season with the Royal Oak program. “It’s extremely disappointing and disheartening. Swimming is a tough sport. It’s not a Friday night sport. There are no pep rallies for the swim team. There are no dances after swimming. It takes a special kid to be a swimmer.”

Millar has been aware of Clawson’s number struggles in recent years. However, he was hopeful the Trojans would see an increase in participants since this is a Summer Olympic Games year. Millar said he typically sees five to six newcomers each season, but welcomed 15 boys this season.

Clawson wasn’t quite as fortunate.

Millar’s sad to think the old days of seeing Clawson and the former Royal Oak Dondero and having kids aim toward the competitive Oakland County meet are now a thing of the past.

“Rick and I had some classic meets between Dondero and Clawson,” Millar said. “I just think of all the great races we had that came down to the last relay with the place screaming and rocking. Now that’s not going to happen anymore. Plus, Joe, the current coach, has worked his tail off to make that team go. I know he’s been beating the bushes in the high school and middle school just to get kids to come out.”

The Trojans will be missing out on much more.

“All those life lessons,” said Millar, who is also the state chairman for the Michigan Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association Individual Academic All-State awards and a member of the MHSAA state swim committee. “With swimming, what you get is what you put into it. There are no easy days. It’s so much like life and now those kids at Clawson are not going to have that opportunity. That’s the biggest tragedy.”